Largest cat painting: Giant 19th century painting sets world record (VIDEO)

NEW YORK, NY, USA -- Sotheby's in New York announced the painting 'My Wife's Lovers' by Austrian artist Carl Kahler -- featuring 42 felines on a 75-inch-by-102-inch canvas -- sold for $826,000 in New York; the work of art sets the world record for being the largest painting of cats,
according to the World Record Academy. Photo: A massive 227-pound painting, the "world's largest cat painting," was recently bought at a Sotheby's auction in New York for $826,000. The piece featuring 42 cats on a 6-feet-by-8.5-feet canvas was "so large and so heavy" that carpenters had to make a special wall reinforced with plywood because when it was put up on a normal wall. Photo: Sotheby
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The Guinness World Records' record for the most expensive painting by a group of elephants, is 'Cold Wind, Swirling Mist, Charming Lanna I', which sold for 1.5 million baht (£20,660, US$39,000) to Panit Warin (Sinanta) (Thailand) on 19 February 2005 at Maesa Elephant Camp, Chiang Mai, Thailand. The painting measured 2.4 m x 8 m (7 ft 10 in x 26 ft 3 in).

Guinness World Records also recognized the world record for the Most expensive painting sold at auction online, set for a Victorian painting The Misses Stewart Hodgson by Lord Frederic Leighton, sold on the internet for $550,750 (£386,220) on 29 November 2001 at Sothebys.com. Polly Sartori, head of 19th century European paintings for Sotheby's in New York, said Kahler had traveled to the West Coast of the United States in 1881 and he encountered art collector Kate Johnson in San Francisco.

"He was invited to her cat ranch. Now, Mrs. Johnson actually was very wealthy. She was a millionaire and she had this giant mansion. Some newspapers report that she had 350 [cats].
So Carl Kahler meets Mrs. Johnson at the ranch, at the mansion, and she asks him if he would paint a portrait of her cats," Sartori told CBC News.

"So, for three years he spends time with the cats in the mansion doing sketches. And then in and around 1893, he does their portrait. He takes all of the sketches and he puts together this monumental-sized giant painting of 42 of her cats."